In many data processing chip sets data is transferred from one or many processors to memory devices and input/output, I/O, subsystems, or other chip components known as functional units, via an appropriate bus structure. Typically, the bus structure includes a processor bus, a system bus and a memory bus. Thus, when there is a memory operation wherein data is required to be moved to or from a memory location to a processor, the system bus would cease to operate until the data movement from the memory location to the processor is completed. Similarly, when there is a data movement from an external device to a memory location, the processor bus would cease to operate until the data is moved to its intended location.
In order to alleviate the under utilization of bus subsystems as described above, patent number 5,668,965 issued on Sep. 16, 1997, teaches the use of a controller that forms a three-way connection of three kinds of buses including a processor bus linked to at least one processor, a memory bus connected to a main memory, and a system bus linked to at least one connected device such as an input/output, I/O, device, thereby establishing interconnections between various buses. The controller includes data path switch means for transferring control signals and addresses through the control and address buses respectively of the three kinds of buses, and for generating a data path control signal to be supplied to the data switch means.
This arrangement allows the use of the buses on an independent basis. For example, when a processor on the processor bus conducts a processor/main memory access to access the main memory on the memory bus, data is transferred only via the processor and memory buses, allowing the system bus to operate independently.
However, the arrangement disclosed in the '965 patent does not provide for a priority based data movement. Furthermore, it does not disclose a mechanism to handle data transfers between endpoints that exhibit mismatched bandwidth requirements.
Additionally, conventional data movement arrangements have failed to address application-specific requirements. For example, when a data processor is employed for handling graphical images and displaying them on a screen, considerable throughput efficiency may be gained by taking into account the memory address patterns that are inherent with such graphical images.
Another disadvantage with conventional systems is that the resources employed by the data movement arrangements cannot be flexibly specified based on a corresponding data transfer between two end points. For example, some data movement arrangements employ fixed buffers to accommodate separate input/output, I/O, data transfers.
Thus, there is a need for a data movement arrangement that overcomes the advantages discussed above, and specifically accommodates data transfers for an integrated media processor chip set that contains various system components such as processors, data cache, three dimensional graphics units, memory and input/output devices.